Review of Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (2009) by Mark F — 06 Feb 2010

This 'movie' is based on the writings of wunderkind, David Foster Wallace's writing, as well as a play adapted from the novel of the same name.

Wallace, for those outside academia pop culture, was a prodigy who gained an MFA and a prestigious mathematics award in the time it took me to stumble through three years of entry-level college. He was also a teenage tennis hopeful, total type-A personality. In other words: wound tighter than a wrist watch and bat-shit crazy. He committed suicide in 2008. His writing is a Julliard drop-out's wet dream. It's got all the angst of Salinger with lots of self loathing thrown in. He's been compared to DeLillo and Jonathan Franzen -- the thinking man's misogynists.

The premise is interesting: a brainiac female grad student decides to interview men in an effort to understand how feminism has shaped their lives.

Actor John Krasinski does a bang-up job directing and editing what basically amounts to two hours of monologues. There's the Lady's Man, the Lovable Geek, etc. -- all stock male characters straight from the cast of any recent romantic comedy.

But some of the more humorous characters, like Ben Shenkman's, aren't that funny. And some of the more shocking characters, aren't that shocking, like when we learn the truth behind one character's creepy student paper arguing an up-side to gang rape.

Ultimately, the story falls into the same giant hole all stories that tackle the divide between the sexes falls in to: stereotypes and over generalizations. Such as when two young waiters ponder the 'state of women today'. Gigantic generalizations spew forth: "All women really want to be swept away by passion" or "all women really want this or that.".

As if anyone, male or female, could succinctly define half the population of the planet in one sentence. More's the pity the title wasn't "Brief Interviews with A Hideous Man". At least that's a number that can be fully dealt with in dramatic writing.